A buff spec might be innovative and cool. Add in defensive utility too in the form of shields and you’d have a possibly unique support. Other games have em and there is a viable fantasy link to it too in the form of how just about every bard class plays. You’d think that those that studied the arcane would have more to handle each and every situation rather than just being “Ooooo ancient power go boom boom” 
Really though. One of the more lost things in the game is the idea that damage prevented or avoided is damage that doesn’t need to be healed. Considering arcane loses mana like healers anyway why not make it a buff and preventative type healer that can use mana and charges to fuel either offensive buffs or defensive buffs. No other healer in the game does that. The only ones that even come relatively close is paladin and priests with devo and pw:s (that’s if u use the mana to put it on the whole group) and monks with their built in physical damage debuff on mobs they hit which is a passive.
Imagine if instead you have a mage that has studied the arcane and can’t direct heal but can channel resources into weaving strong defensive spell buffs for the group or in periods of low damage (which happens frequently if the tank has DR up or in raid when raid wide mechanics aren’t happening) channel offensive buffs that boost single player damage burst or buff the group in small ways. They could even limit time warp to this iteration of arcane taking it away from fire and frost mages.
It would change the way a lot of content would and could be approached and would necessitate bringing at least one arcane mage to raids for the sheer utility boost. It would also reward good proactive play and players that can apply situational intelligence and would be a guaranteed FoTM spec for how different it is from anything wow has ever done.
It would be fun :<
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It’s not ever going to happen. A spec that can’t easily do solo content and is a requirement for dungeons or raids is the exact opposite of Blizz’s current balance philosophy.
On another note, why delete arcane instead of just fixing the spec? There’s eventually going to be another hero class (probably intellect-based), maybe apply some of these ideas to that. Same with all of the “make arcane a tank!” threads.
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Sadly so. God I hope they make a hero class like this then but I feel it fits the arcane class fantasy and theme better. The current “theme” is just rehashing wrath arcane and is just trying to convert raw power in a way that can never scale and even when it does is just big numbers. It’s probably why they can’t make anything that makes sense outside if the basic “cast 4 ABs and barrage” model
Do you want arcane mages to complain like survival hunters? That’s how you get arcane mages to complain like survival hunters. There is no room in the game for Blizzard to remove a spec only to replace it with something of the same name but isn’t even thematically similar.
There are numerous ways they could fix Arcane’s deficiencies that people on the forums have mentioned. It wouldn’t even be that hard, Blizzard just needs to actually do it.
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I mean you’ve seen me on here enough to know I agree with that sentiment just Blizzard never seem to go that direction. Two things alone would fix arcane enough for viability: shoulder legendary and arcane orb baseline. Why they haven’t done that is beyond me
- arcane explosion made a targeted spell
building m+ cool we got a mage yay we have a ranged dps…NVM IS ARCANE!
As much as I love the idea of playing a support class, as others have said there are so many problems with it that I don’t see it happening unless there are massive changes to a lot of core systems within the game.
1 - It would become a requirement for Mythic raids, but you’d typically only take 1 of them. Goes against the “bring the player not the class” philosophy that Blizzard supposedly has.
2 - In most raid encounters other than a tank you can lose a few players and still get through the kill. In this case, having that 1 support player die would wreck your progression attempt.
3 - It would need to borrow so much utility from other classes/specs that it would be universally hated.
4 - It would suffer in solo and small group content, and with M+ becoming more and more of a core system you’re essentially deleting an entire spec from being able to participate (though to be fair, no one was really taking certain specs anyway)
5 - With all the content options (10-30 man raiding, M+, BGs) it would be virtually impossible to balance it. It would either be OP strong with it’s raid-wide buffs, or so weak that it would be declined from all but the most casual content.
6 - I wouldn’t trust Blizzard. They’ve shown time and time again that they fail at class design and balance with existing specs that I have zero faith they’d be able to create a new class that is not only effective but actually fun to play.
It would be an interesting concept and these sorts of classes work amazingly in other games, but I don’t see it fitting in with any of the core systems that are in WoW.
That’s sort of where the idea came from. They have a class or spec like that in Final Fantasy XIV which isn’t a pure healer or a pure dps and is somewhat rng in how it plays. Of course encounter design there is very different and not as throughput dependent as WoW generally is.
My personal idea of how it could be balanced in 5man content is that it would be a high risk high reward option. The absence of pure throughput heals and only cooldowns to mitigate damage is if the rest of the group screws up it would be over which would point to taking safer healing or tank classes if need be for that safety net.
I am inclined to agree with you though that while it is an interesting concept it is highly unlikely to be one Blizzard will ever be able to implement. They just have never shown the aptitude for such a thing in all these years. It’s a sad thing too
and what FFXIV class is that? because in FFXIV there arent hybrids jobs
AST is still healer that has some buffs on the side 
Which is what I was suggesting this iteration of arcane could be…it seems you misunderstood my post or didn’t read it. To be fair it is long so a tldr is a thing for some people.
To clarify for the sake of your reading comprehension since it wasn’t terribly clear: the class is “neither pure dps nor pure healer” by which I was meaning to say that it doesn’t operate like a basic healer does with standard throughput heals and fillers and is not a dps. I was not trying to suggest or imply it was hybrid of both as it isn’t at all. You could call it a healer class and that is as you put it, its job. But I was trying to allude to the fact that it functions very differently from how standard healing classes work whether that be in the form of buffer healers that shield or instant fill buffer amounts of health leveraging player health as a resource (like disc priests or holy paladins) or more standard healing over time healers (everyone else). 
I even made the distinction of saying this iteration of arcane would be a support rather than fitting it to just a healer class and here’s the kicker: I said my idea was “based off of” Astrologian; meaning it wasn’t meant to be a direct copy but rather a derivation. I hope that helped clarify it and apologize for the unintended misdirection
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ahhh now i undertand i see what u mean now 
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I’d prefer a non-heals support. Disc already exists, and you reach a point where you either need another healer or you don’t, not something in between. I’d much rather take a DPS spot and buff others. Maybe that’s just me though, I already play Frost so I’m used to doing half the damage of other classes.
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